The present invention deals with machine translation. More specifically, the present invention deals with means for systematically improving the performance of a user's automatic machine translation system within the normal workflow of acquiring corrected translations from a reliable source.
As a result of the growing international community created by technologies such as the Internet, machine translation, more specifically the utilization of a computer system to translate natural language texts, has achieved more widespread use in recent years. In some instances, machine translation can be automatically accomplished. However, human interaction is sometimes integrated into the process of creating a quality translation. Generally speaking, translations that rely on human resources are more accurate but less time and cost efficient than fully automated systems. For some translation systems, human interaction is relied upon only when translation accuracy is of critical importance. The time and cost associated with human interaction generally must be invested every time a particularly accurate translation is desired.
The quality of translations produced by fully automated machine translation has generally not increased with the rising demand for such systems. It is generally recognized that, in order to obtain a higher quality automatic translation for a particular domain (or subject matter), significant customization must be done to the machine translation system. Customization typically includes the addition of specialized vocabulary and rules to translate texts in the desired domain. Such customization is typically achieved by trained computational linguists, who use semi-automated tools to add vocabulary items to online dictionaries, and who write linguistically oriented rules, typically in specialized rule writing languages. This type of customization is relatively expensive.
Overall, translation services, which are available to consumers from a variety of sources, fail to provide cost-efficient, high quality, customized translations. For example, shrink-wrapped and web-based translation systems are currently available to the general public. However, these translation systems are difficult or impossible to customize for a particular domain or subject matter. Commercial-grade translation systems are also available. These systems can be customized for specific domains, however, the customization process is tedious and typically quite expensive. Direct human-based translation services are also available (i.e., web-based and mail order based human translation services). However, human translations typically require payment of a fee for every document to be translated, an expense that never ends.